SO LONG A LETTER TO PULSEWIRE

Disclaimer: All views expressed in this blog are the author's, do not necessarily represent the views of UNDP or United Nations Member States, or of any organisation mentioned in this article.

Life has gifted me with a voluptuous mouth to kiss and speak sense
To express myself freely before it freezes, and to reject nonsense
To soothe the sick with comforting words and sting the malevolent

Life has gifted you with brains to understand what appears complex
To sift through the intricacies of lies, superstitions and mystification
To restrain your impulses and free you from your bewitching feelings
(Professor Simon Akindes, Education and Training Leaders. IPSS)

Dear Pulsewire

RE: CAUX INITIATIVES OF CHANGE HEALED MY TRAUMA, THE INSTITUTE FOR PEACE AND SECURITY STUDIES (IPSS) - ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY RESTORED MY VOICE

This week the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) gave me back my voice, and I am glad to be able to write to you again Pulsewire. I write you from IPSS-Addis Ababa University. I received a scholarship from the African Union (AU) to read for an Executive Master in Peace and Security in Africa (MAPSA) here. This morning, I recited one of my poems in performance before my MAPSA class. My poem ‘Mama Africa’ invokes the spirits of the goddesses of Africa: Nehanda Nyakasikana, Queen Nzinga, Queen Nefertiti, Queen Nyabinghi and Queen Amina of Zau Zau to mention a few. It invokes them to rise up and support the cry for women’s rights, and for ending violence against women in conflict. It also celebrates the beauties and expanses of Africa, its echoing mountains and flowing rivers. In the same vein it explodes the horror, pain and anger at the rumbling guns and flowing blood of innocent civilians in violent conflicts in Africa. It replays the shame of women whose bodies are forcefully turned into battlefields for depositing the negative energies dissipated in moments of military shame, horror and egoism, and tells sad tales of stigmatized children of war, and girl children of war, whose innocence and sweetness is in turn stolen at gun point.

This morning was to me a moment of epiphany, where I conveyed in words and action those painful stories you would rather not talk about. It was more of a necessity than a choice, African scholars have to know that we women are tired of rape and force in conflict. I fused my poetry with actions of both joyous celebration and painful compunctions, and with neurological acts of finger-holds. Finger-holds is a feminist strategy for dealing with pain, and for enabling non-violent communication in times of tension and insecurity. I learnt this finger-holds stress management strategy at a feminist movement building safe-space convened by Just Associates (JASS) for gender activists in Johannesburg in 2013.

Pulsewire, do you know JASS? JASS is an international feminist organisation founded in 2003 as a community of practice by activists, popular educators and scholars from 13 countries. It works with women and diverse organizations and social movements in 27 countries, training and supporting activist leadership and grassroots organizing as well as building and mobilising alliances amplified by creative media strategies to influence change in discriminatory institutions, policies and beliefs. JASS’ agile regional and international structures and processes link grassroots activism to local and to global solidarity and action, placing front-line activists and agendas at the heart of social justice work. JASS documents messy processes of change to generate cutting edge knowledge about power, movements and change - to shape theory, practice and policies for advancing women’s rights and democratic change. In Southern Africa JASS helps strengthen non-formal spaces for women’s safety and security, and for placing body politics at the heart of movement building in a space whose structural inequalities cause burn out and draining traumatic experiences to the less powerful, especially women. In Malawi JASS helps marginalised women address issues of bio-politics through advocating for safer Anti-Retrovirals (ARVs) in the face of poverty and options for cheap and toxic ARVs that have become even more detrimental to recipients’ health needs than the disease itself.

Last Friday, as we wrapped up our studies for the week, I had occasion to share a poetry performance stage with Professor Simon Akindes. I am pretty sure you have not met Professor Akindes yet. He is a man. He is in charge of the learning programme at IPSS. He is a writer, poet and a charismatic healer, conflict resolver and peace-builder. He writes purposive poetry, with a unique style that allows participatory performance on stage, reason why I shared the stage with him to provide the other voice in his two-voiced poem, titled ‘Pachamama and Life’s gifts.’ The performance was within the rubric of alternative sources of knowledge for non-violent communication, non-violent conflict resolution engagement and alternative safe spaces for personal and spiritual grounding, personal empowerment, healing and restoration, such as the Capoera dance for example. ‘Pachamama and Life Gifts’ celebrates the joys of life, and thanks mother Universe for the gift of life. It creates peace, while opening avenues for pacific existence; full of choice, joy, appreciation and diversity. His writing conforms to the modern ways of creating systems of power that dominate existing dominant ones - it is highly political writing, writing that challenges mainstream communication methods. Professor Akindes is indeed a measure of Pan-African creativity.

Pulse wire, I have provided you with a picture of Professor Simon Akindes above, holding the drum, lest you think that I am writing fiction. The drum, in my tradition is a unifier of the living with the living, and of the living with the dead. It allows the body to release the soul, and takes the soul miles and miles away from the pains of the world to the joys and sweetness of possibilities, and it brings back the soul to combine with the mind and the body for a better and longer life. The drum is a healer in my village, it allows me and my folks to retain, in the face of violence and shame, our humanity and our individual and collective integrity, and it allows us to listen to the beating our own hearts. One day Pulsewire, we spent 3 hours waiting at Istanbul airport. We were waiting for Rudo's drum that the air services had misplaced. Rudo is a young V-warrior, and she carried her drum all the way from Zimbabwe to Turkey to send the right message. This is how important the drum is to us women of Zimbabwe. Instead of beating women, men should beat the drum.

The IPSS is a liberating modern space of learning. I love spaces where I can feel secure to use my mouth to express what in my view is sensible, and to reject what I think does not add up to the life I desire for humanity. I love to do this without getting judged and threatened subtly and covertly, and without having my e-privacy unreasonably violated, and my emails hacked by dubious authorities, as if I carry a virtual nucleus bomb. I keep praying for a world where we will all have no secrets to hide and hypocrisies to shield, where sisterhood will be trusted, and where e-spaces will be more democratic and more empowering. Pulsewire, please don’t misquote me. I am not saying that I have all life’s answers, or that I am in any way perfect. I am just saying in all my limitations and imperfection, I still retain my rights as a full human being in every space, and I still have choices to be respected as long as they do not over ride other people’s inclinations. I still have the right for my worth to be recognized through value placed on the work that I do, and I also have a right to secrecy.

Pulsewire, I am afraid of people who criticise big mouthed African women, I run away from them at their first expression of the phrase ‘big-mouth’ because,

Life has gifted me with a voluptuous mouth to kiss and speak sense
To express myself freely before it freezes, and to reject nonsense
To soothe the sick with comforting words and sting the malevolent
(From poem by Professor Simon Akindes – IPSS)

I thank you Pulsewire for creating this enabling platform, and for creating a community of women and a few reasonable men practitioners committed to Foucault ’s view of a modern re-organization of knowledge as a way of challenging dominant discourse and dominant systems of power, and also of generating new forms of power for the oppressed.

Pulsewire, before I forget, I need to explain to you why I have not been writing on your blog space for close to three months. I last wrote on 14 July. I had lost my voice, completely Pulsewire, and had forgotten myself in the maze of confusion and trauma - my own confusion and that of the world around me. I also needed time off to explain to the world around me that I am not in any way gainfully employed by you, that I have not signed any secret contract with you, and that I receive no financial benefits from you for writing with you. The world around me wanted to know, and was spying all my e-spaces for the slightest possible evidence, which however does not exist.

The world wanted to know why I was churning out script after script of what may be wisdom to those who love it and nonsense to those who view it as such. I was also off writing because I was dealing with too many processes that brought shame and trauma to me to the point of silencing me. Out of confusion I decided to shut myself out and withdraw, but I did not realise that each day I kept silent about things that matter to me I was killing my person-hood slowly, and slowly. I kept more silence with each day, and I kept dying slowly, until I died complete. I died of imagination, passion and creativity, until all the ears of my body could only record nothing but pain and all the deleterious connections associated with it. I became blind to the reality that women’s struggles for freedom, all forms of freedom are not easy processes, and that gender oppression knows no space, class or sex. I lived in this limbo until I took a journey to the Caux Peacebuilding Centre in Switzerland in August, where I attended a Peace-builders Forum and a Summer School combined together over 9 days.

My journey to Caux was long and tiring, given the state of depression and acquired blindness I was living with at the time. I was also struggling with a strained stiff neck resulting from burn out and stress, and could hardly turn my neck around for the 24 hours I traveled to Caux. The journey to Caux was both a real and metaphorical one; real because I undertook the journey despite my physically painful body, and metaphorical in that it was an eye opener and a saviour from my state of depression, and enabled me to open my eyes once again and realise the need to provide peaceful solutions and personally founded initiatives to the forces of oppression that were pressing me down. Through out my stay at Caux I recited Martin Luther King's phrase that \"We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.\" I recited this until I dreamt of Martin Luther King sharing a stage with Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah and Mbuya Nehanda Nyakasikana. I love Pan-African feminism Pulsewire. The story of how I found myself at Caux is similar to the one of how I landed myself - or was landed here at IPSS where I am writing from dear Pulsewire. It is another long story of how the Universe takes care of broken women. I arrived at the Caux Initiatives of Change (IofC) International Conflict Training Centre on 10 August 2014.

Part 11: CAUX EXTINGUISHED MY BURN OUT AND GAVE ME NEW TOOLS FOR CONCEPTUALIZING CONFLICT AND PEACE BUILDING

The Caux (IofC) has been active for over 80 years, and grew out of Frank Buchanan spiritual experience of release from bitterness emanating from crucial ways that altered the course of his life. Buchanan (1878-1961) was an American Lutheran minister who consistently demonstrated the connection between faith and change in society, and currently his work has expanded to include people of all diversities, including none religious ones. The growth of the Caux (IofC) into a world class conflict resolution and peacebuilding centre from what started as a Lutheran priest’s post war idea on morality as the ethos for peace epitomizes the evolution of a global peace and security architecture born out of the influences and effects of the war, and is rooted in Galtung’s theory of growth from war theories and processes to peacebuilding processes for the attainment of positive peace. As European nations re-armed for war, Buchanan called for 'moral and spiritual re-armament' and reconciliation as the way to build a peace. Results for this initiative stretch back to 1947, at a time when any contact with the Germans was extremely difficult, and Buchanan invited them to Caux. Many more Germans and French people continued to come to Caux thereafter, and their encounters in this peaceful environment became the basis for the reconciliation and peace that followed. This IofC initiative, known as the Moral Re-Armament (MRA) movement then, is also popular for its role in post-war reconciliation between Japan and Philippines. Tens of thousands of people in 80 countries are estimated to be part of IofC, and the movement remains loosely organized and non-formal. The movement has been active in regions of tension such as Lebanon, the Middle East, former Yugoslavia, the Horn of Africa, Cambodia, as well as in civil society on every continent, running outreach programs that include the Agenda for Reconciliation for peace-building; Hope in the Cities -working for racial justice and healing; Foundations for Freedom - a training program in values for democracy; and Creators of Peace, an international women's initiative for ending violence and building peaceful communities.

Coming from the mainstream, my first criticism of the Caux Centre was that it lacked a wellness centre on its programme. I expected to go for a massage as my stiff neck was promising to break following the long travels. I had afforded only one massage back home before I traveled, as the service providers required cash in lieu of claims from my medical aid. But I was so wrong Pulsewire. Healing does not come from massage, massage only releases, relieves and strengthens the muscles, until one is ready to come back and pay for another massage. True healing comes from the heart, and is a personal initiative that of course requires support from others. Caux restored my potential to harness my power from within for safety and security. I was socialized to the concept of ‘power within’ by JASS over the years, but I had allowed that potential to die in one or two months because of extreme negativity and pressure. At Caux I transformed, starting with basic small things like teaching myself never to throw litter anywhere else except in a bin, tidying my own room and taking my bed linen to the laundry, being part of the community of volunteerism to help prepare and serve meals with others as assigned. The issue of hotel waiters and cleaners that I was used to vanished completely at Caux, and up to now I never ceased to do the costing of huge amounts of money spent on what we could do for ourselves with so much ease in spaces if we adopt the frame of taking full responsibility for our actions and for our surroundings. I learnt the power of proper planning and collectivism, and that transformative leadership lies more in planning than in imposing hegemony.

At Caux I saw concrete results that come with such initiatives; clean environments, healthy life styles, and proper resource utilization. Key moments for me were my conversation with a colleague from America - one of the participants at the forum, and also a keen and committed peacebuilding expert, and my participation in one of the break-away sessions on managing trauma.

In conversation with my fellow participant, he raised key issues on self-care and personal initiatives for health safety and security. He articulated Audrey Lourde’s principle on self-care as a political activity, and stressed the importance of taking time off from work. In his thinking, time should be invested more for self-care than for work, because once one loses their balance and health, work will suffer. He proposes various strategies for self-care, among them yoga, meditation and gym, and also stressed the need to take time off from work, and even break away from work for a month or two for personal holiday. He was obviously empathizing with my condition, and saw me every day in class struggling to balance my stiff neck.

Pulse-wire, I did not respond to my colleague, partly because my voice was completely lost at the time, and also because some things are too scary to talk about. I nodded my head in agreement at each expression of what I found to be very sensible and truthful reality, but kept totally silent while I looked at him straight in the eyes with the confidence of the dead woman that I was living with. Inside me however, I allowed my conscience to talk to him:

My silent voice: \"Thank you colleague, so true, but some models of the West cannot be applied in cut and paste form in some spaces in Africa, where I come from. My continent is still reeling from negative legacies of colonialism, and still believe that the worker has no right to rest, and that the body has no politics. Colleague, there are still some spaces where leave from work can never be a luxury, or a right either, where workers cannot even start think of taking a month or two away from work without pay because they need the money so much. You know what colleague, there is so much job insecurity in some spaces, that a worker would find their position taken on returning back after a month or two, in fact such a model of leave without pay to pursue body politics does not exist – what exists is the option of leave without pay when the worker finally succumbs to burn out and fatigue and become obsolete in the space. Yes colleague, the option of taking prescribed leave days to do personal business exists, but again, some spaces are so bureaucratic and the process of applying for leave days is such a long and tedious one you would rather live with your burn out because starting that process would give you even worse forms of burn out. You also have to know yourself well in the space to be able to get your leave days approved stress-free. This is how wide the world is my colleague, but thanks anyway for the advice. When I get into permitting spaces one day, I will remember to take compensatory time off and leave to pursue self-care.\"

I wanted so much to tell my colleague never to take things for granted, and that processes are complex and different, but I did not find the voice to do that because I was a dead woman, dead because my personal voice had frozen from trauma, and my body could only register pain, especially the pain from my stiff neck that was threatening to dislocate and throw me into permanent imbalance.

The breakaway session on conceptualizing trauma made me understand that trauma is not a single overwhelming event, but involves different processes with cumulative effect. I took stock of my life, and was able to register all traumatizing events from my childhood to date. I am a product of too many painful processes Pulsewire, some of them larger systemic ones that have left permanent legacies still permeating through generations of my kith and kin. I carry both patriarchal and colonial trauma, and am also surrounded by people who are also failing to cope with their childhood and other traumas. In this session I was taught to focus more on the self than on blaming others, and I was taught of the need to forgive myself for all my past traumas and start living life anew. From that day I have been taking stork of my traumatizing experiences, going as far back as I can remember, and writing all those scars in my journal. I will find a day Pulsewire, a day to go out with my friends, people with the same experiences as mine, to go out and burnt the journal as some safe and convenient space. I will do this ritual to inform my new, positive life going forward.

I do not know the other hidden dynamics at the Caux IofC, as no process is ever flawless, but from what I saw with my eyes and experienced with my being, this space really threw me off the ground with surprise. It changed my perception of life, and gave me many more reasons to remain positive. I will forever live to remember this experience. This session made me realise that peacebuilding is my vacation, and its processes became of more political value to me than ever before. I remembered my first encounter with peacebuilding, at the Center for Security and Development Group (CSDG), Department of War Studies at King’s College London where I was a Research Fellow in 2007, and I thanked the Universe for that opportunity.

I kept attending my workshop sessions at Caux IofC for the whole week, and partook in Yoga sessions as required by the programme. I focused more on my inner being, engaged with others and took part in required voluntary processes. I took good care of my room and my surroundings, and in a few days’ time I was able to hold my head high, and all the pain in my neck was gone, without having visited any hospital or expensive massage parlor. Positive initiatives for peace help restore our health, and in turn serve our already strained economies from additional burdens. I left Caux with a pain free balanced neck above my shoulders, and since that day I have been reflecting strongly on the concept of peace from within, and on the concept of transformative leadership for Africa.

I learnt of the notion of transformative leadership at the African Centre for Inclusive and Transformative Leadership (ACTIL), a combined initiative of UN Women and Kenyatta University. ACTIL was formed following the realization for the need to direct Africa’s potential more towards processes for development and sustainable peace. This is the time where discussions about Vision 2063 were muted, alongside a dialogue about the ‘missing piece’ – the piece of transformative leaders to inform an agenda of lasting peace and development in view of the rising military coups, armed conflict, disease, violence against women and poverty in the face of many natural resources.

IPSS has re-opened my mouth, re-triggered my imagination and gave me a renewed sense of hope, I have decided to write again. I have decided to write and tell the world that I am not employed by you, I am a voluntary citizen journalist writing out of a passion to connect the lives of women - the market women I work with and any other willing women in Zimbabwe with the wider world. I have often been criticized for doing works of passion, and have no reason to defend that position, except to buttress it with the fact that I possess a highly political passion borne out of a long period of feminist expansion, and grounded in feminist theorizing to dream and imagine better worlds, diverse processes and desired possibilities for women.

PART III: THE INSTITUTE FOR PEACE AND SECURITY STUDIES - HAS RESTORED MY VOICE

My dear Pulsewire, I was healed of trauma and thrown off the ground by Caux IofC’s framework for peace, but this was only until the day I arrived at Addis Ababa IPSS. When I arrived here, I stopped and held my breath, and sang a new song for mama Africa, a continent full of possibilities for lasting transformation.

I arrived at IPSS on 8th September 2014.

The IPSS is a premier institute of higher education for peace and security studies in the region. Its mission is to promote peace and security in Ethiopia and Africa at large through education, research and professional development. The institution produces skilled professionals in conflict prevention, management as well as in peacebuilding, and promotes the values of a democratic and peaceful society. The IPSS received status of one of the African Centres of Excellence in 2010. One of the IPSS academic programmes is the Executive Masters in Peace and Security for Africa (MAPSA), to which I am a scholarship recipient funded by the African Union (AU). MAPSA is a joint programme of the AU and IPSS-Addis Ababa University, mandated by the AU‘s Executive Council to take up the intellectual challenge of finding African-led solutions to peace and security in Africa. This year IPSS has made ground-breaking record in terms of ensuring the AU envisaged 50/50 quota by bringing on board 7 female students amongst the 16 students enrolled for the programme, in line with the mandate for Resolution 1325 on Women Peace and Security, and with the AU Protocol on Gender Equality. Within the current set up of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) of the AU women have been able to access critical positions and play crucial roles in peace and security issues on the continent.

I started lessons on arrival at IPSS, and have already undertaken a learning visit to the AU, where I got a better and updated understanding of its APSA. One moment I want to single out for you Pulse-wire is my registration process. I single it out because it bears my identity – how I have been named here at IPSS, and naming of the personal for me as an African feminist is highly significant. Naming is also important in peace-building processes, because the way you label someone, a process or a group of people says a lot about your perception of them. I have always struggled with the naming of non-governmental armed groups as rebels in conflict situations in Africa. Really Pulse-wire, should we continue calling them rebel groups? Does this naming not make them more infuriated and turn on us and our daughters with more viciousness and terror? How do we engage when we seek to engage them for peace talks when we label them as rebels? How do we make our sisters better when we call them prostitutes or ladies of the night? The power of nomenclature in peace and security issues is the reason why I see value in naming the Zimbabwean women involved in peace-building at various levels as peace builders than as peacekeepers, as the former gives more political value to the contributions have made throughout the various historical phases, as well as enable the right representations of a rare women’s narrative that the mainstream has often denied. I digress a bit here Pulsewire, and my apologies, but I have made my point. So back to the issues:

My registration and all other related papers for me here read Dudziro Nhengu - UN Women, Zimbabwe. The personal is political my dear Pulsewire. Here I represent my person-hood and my passion for gender sensitive peace building processes because I am an African feminist. I represent also my employer UN Women Zimbabwe Country Office. UN Women is the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality, working across the globe to deliver on gender equality and women’s empowerment gender equality for all women of the world. In Zimbabwe UN Women established a Gender, Peacebuilding and Security programme support gender sensitive security sector strengthening to enable women’s effective participation in all processes of governance and politics, to which I am a supporting officer. The project responds to the provisions outlined in the UN Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security that provide a comprehensive political framework within which women’s protection and their role in conflict prevention and resolution can be addressed. UN Women also has partnerships with afore mentioned transformative organisations like ACTIL-Kenyatta University and Africa University to ensure capacity building for transformative leadership among security sector actors, female parliamentarians and civil society; to achieve the goal of strengthening women’s participation in leadership and governance by providing a space for reflection, learning and shared experiences for women leaders.

The UN Women Peacebuilding project has been made possible with support from the Government of Norway. The history and role played by the Norwegians in peacebuilding processes stretches back to the beginning of the history of wars on the globe, and in Africa the Norwegians are well known for supporting the liberation struggles that freed us from colonial rule.

Last but not least, I represent my country, the beautiful Republic of Zimbabwe. My country has seen worse times Pulsewire, and is indeed a product of time and history, but it remains my country all the same, and nothing whatsoever can change that fact. It is a fact stubborn as my feminism. Zimbabwe was born out of a protracted and bloody revolutionary resistance against the British colonizer. This war was led by a very strong nationalist movement, with support from home here in Africa and abroad. I belong to a blessed generation, because I witnessed colonialism, I witnessed the war of liberation, and all ensuing processes to date. I know how impossible it was for me to cross Lobengula Street in Bulawayo city where my father served in the security services sector as I grew up. I remained in Lobengula Street, where my father had a bank account with Cabs, and bought from shops along that street and never beyond, it was no go area for Africans. We never aspired to cross that street, as the prizes of commodities in shops across this road were not meant for indigenous people, known that time as the ‘Bantu’, but the knowledge that this was our country, and the curiosity to know what it looked like across the forbidden space always kept us dreaming of crossing the line that demarcated us from the superior race. This part to me is unforgettable because it shaped which woman I am today. It shaped my resistance to orders and authority founded on principles of segregation and despise, and taught me to always question processes to the point of rejection, and to the point of death. This history of oppression taught me to cross the line, and I have crossed more than a single line dear Pulsewire, without any regrets.

This stance has cost me lovers, friends, better contracts and all, but it has allowed me to remain who I am – a critically conscious Pan-African Feminist. Also unforgettable to me is the role of the nationalist liberation movement to my emancipation, and to the freedom of my country from colonial rule. Small things, like being able to cross Lobengula street matter to me, although of course the dynamics of what resources are available for who to buy what across Lobengula Street still remain with us today. However, I also sit with another burning agenda dear Pulsewire. As a feminist in a war torn continent, and in a structurally different country, I will never allow my love and appreciation for the nationalist movement to swallow my outcry over the levels of violence – sexual, structural and otherwise, matted out against women today, 50 years after the first Independence on the continent, and five decades after the formation of the AU (OAU). The horrific and shameful violations matted against women during slavery, and during colonialism, were carried out during all the liberation struggles in Africa, and later transferred to both our public and private spheres today. What exactly am I struggling to say? I am bemoaning the Africa of Nkrumah’s vision, the Africa that spoke with peace and with pride, and with hope for a free and integrated continent for both women and men alike. I refuse to keep silent on the need for African leaders to come out of the colonial violence mode, to stop laying blame on past processes and help build better states for women and men alike. I keep dreaming of better times, but shudder at the new scramble for Africa currently surfacing throughout my continent, this time with an Asian head. I watch with fear as portions and portions of land are parceled out to foreigners through secret deals. This week dear Pulsewire, my country signed a mining deal with Russia. My country faces sanctions from America, and America has many back door deals with Russia, including deals of war. Fear is a bad thing Pulsewire, but in moments like these it is inevitable. Russia also signed a bilateral agreement with the AU this week to strengthen economic and political ties, and has commitments to strengthen nuclear policies with South Africa too. My thumb is paining, and I keep holding it for minutes on end as I write to you Pulse-wire. Mama Africa, for how long are you going to be an economic back-up for the West, at the expense of your own people.

PART V: CONCLUSIONS – PEACE-BUILDING REQUIRES A COMBINATION OF DIVERSE STRATEGIES RANGING FROM THE LIBERALISM OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON TO THE RADICALISM OF FREDRICK W. DUBOIS.

Pulsewire, I have collapsed many issues into a single and somewhat confusing narrative. I did this with a purpose, firstly to highlight the intricacies of conflict, and the pain and confusion of many stories that make up my life, and maybe yours too. I also did this with the purpose of showing my African wordsmith skills, imparted through generations from the times of my basket weaving great grandmother, through the generation of my story-telling grandmother, and down to the feminist narrative of an aspiring wordsmith on the Pulsewire blog. I also scattered many issues in the narrative as a methodology for healing, so that as I sift through the confusion and isolate one issue from another I am able to burn the various levels of trauma that have followed me since childhood, and heal in the process. But most of all dear Pulsewire, I scattered the narrative around for a highly political reason. I wanted to talk about many players involved in peacebuilding process, bringing in diverse methods of confronting conflict - methods ranging from the liberal Booker T. Washington to the radical Fredrick W. Du Bois. In my narrative I have scattered a diverse range of peace builders, ranging from individual activists and professionals to both formal and non-formal organisations. I have mentioned individuals like Professor Simon Akindes, presenting and representing the ideals of the organisations they work with. I have also told you about various organisations, non-formal and radical ones like JASS and Caux, radical in that they choose not to conform to the mainstream model of formal organizing, but highly peaceful in that they use non-violent means of confronting and questioning the status quo through subtle methodologies such as heart-mind-body, Yoga, the Capoera dance, poetry, the drum and fostering the spirit of volunteerism for character armament and for fostering change from within. I have also mentioned formal organisations like UN Women, like the Norwegian Embassy, like the government of Zimbabwe, like AISA, like the African but London-based Centre for Security and Development Group, like you Pulsewire, you are a peacebuilder, and like the AU. There are other more radical movements that I did not mention, much more radical than Fredrick W. Dubois himself, and I am thinking here of the Skothane movement in South Africa, a movement of youngsters from poor families who publicly burn the currency as an expression of challenging the status quo and demanding value and dignity for humankind. Much as these organisations differ in their constitution and perception of views, a common thread runs through them; they all work in small and big ways towards building a positive peace, and towards the change that Africa would want to see in 2063. Peacebuilding requires as diverse players and methods as the problem of conflict itself is, and Africa must pay attention and give value to all the players without upholding others as legitimate and others as outcasts if a lasting positive peace is to be achieved. Below dear Pulsewire, I publish a poem by Professor Simon Akindes that I have quoted from through out my narrative. It reminds me of Maya Angelou's poem, Still I rise, and I quote two stanzas:

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Those two stanzas by Maya Angelou dear Pulsewire, connect very well with Professor Akindes' poem below, and both poems I find powerful. Powerful because they give back confidence to the despised and downtrodden, powerful because they place value on personal voice and the ability to articulate what does not sit down well with you, and powerful because they are true.

Pachamama Life Gifts by Professor S. Akindes (IPSS - Addis Ababa)

Life has gifted me with two small piercing eyes to see deep, far and big
To peer through the cloud, to detect the invisible and the hidden
To enjoy the beauty of things and people, and cry when my heart hurts
Life has gifted you with two ears to hear no evil, no gossip, nor curses
To enjoy the melodies of birds, the rhythm of rains and babies’ laughs
To record your parents’ inspiring words and your woman’s soft moaning
Life has gifted me with a bizarre re-shaped heart as vast as the earth
A heart to love those who hate me and show them the sacred way
A heart to host and feel with the sick, the forsaken and the declassified

Life has gifted you with a nose to smell exquisite foods and your woman
A nose to recognize the stench freely deposited in and around the city
A nose to people and polluting minds

Life has gifted me with a voluptuous mouth to kiss and speak sense
To express myself freely before it freezes, and to reject nonsense
To soothe the sick with comforting words and sting the malevolent

Life has gifted you with brains to understand what appears complex
To sift through the intricacies of lies, superstitions and mystification
To restrain your impulses and free you from your bewitching feelings

Life has gifted me with quick feet and slow legs to run its marathon
It bends and adapts to my sanity and leads me to my destination
It keeps creating new dreams while ridding me of my illusions

Life, in its infinity and imperial generosity keeps dispensing
It does not do harm, does not brag, does not store filth and pus
It bravely fights death, provides happiness and makes no fuss

Mama Pachamama, I thank you too!